Amazon Acquires Twitch

Trending News: Wait, Why Did Amazon Just Drop Almost A Billion In Cash?

Why Is This Important?

In acquiring Twitch, Amazon has bought into two hugely hot properties at the same time: online video and gaming.

Long Story Short

Amazon has agreed to buy online video streaming service Twitch for a fee of $970 million, beating Google to the punch. The move adds another string to Amazon's already impressive bow of services and products as well as a route straight to the pockets of young gamers.

Long Story

Amazon has sealed one of the biggest tech deals of the year by picking up game streaming site Twitch for $970 million. Having seen phenomenal growth since it first appeared as a standalone service in 2011, Twitch attracts around 50 million unique visitors a month, most of whom are glued to live feeds of games being played in real time.

The figure paid by Amazon, as well as the rumor that Google was one of the rival suitors, shows just how significant a move this is by the online retail giant. Twitch is built into both Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One, which should guarantee its growth continues for the foreseeable future — the site also scores highly in terms of user engagement and a young demographic which further adding to its appeal.

As for Amazon, it instantly becomes a serious player in both online gaming and video sharing. Jeff Bezos' company has been rapidly diversifying from its retail origins, bringing out its own hardware, its own version of Android and its own music streaming service in recent times. The Twitch platform will continue to be run as an independent property, Amazon said.

"We chose Amazon because they believe in our community, they share our values and long-term vision, and they want to help us get there faster," commented Twitch CEO Emmett Shear in a press statement. His platform has already been looking into diversifying its capabilities, experimenting with live concert streams earlier this year.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, said: "Like Twitch, we obsess over customers and like to think differently, and we look forward to learning from them and helping them move even faster to build new services for the gaming community." Gaming capabilities are something the company is keen to promote on its new Amazon Fire TV media box, which could in time become a low-budget no-frills games console in its own right.

For the one million active Twitch users, it'll be business as usual, at least for the foreseeable future — Amazon is playing the long game here. As with Facebook's acquisition of Oculus Rift and Google's takeover of Nest, the plan is to branch out into new areas. Microsoft and Sony are the ones fighting on the front line for market share, but now Amazon has something that's an integral part of both platforms, and that could prove invaluable as the scene evolves over the next few years.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question: How healthy is it for every promising startup to be snapped up by Facebook, Google, Apple or Amazon?

Disrupt Your Feed: Video gaming is already a bigger business than Hollywood movies, and the gap is only going to get bigger.

Drop This Fact: At peak times in the United States, only Netflix, Google and Apple services take up more bandwidth than Twitch.

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Amazon To Buy Video Game Live-Streaming Site Twitch For $970 Million [Time]